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Chicken Croquettes

A fried roll of sweetbread, chicken, bread, and butter coated in cracker dust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the sweetbreads and chicken very fine.

  2. Mix in the boiled onion, boiled bread and milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Shape the mixture into rolls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each roll in the egg yolk, then coat with cracker dust.

  2. Fry until brown and serve on crisp lettuce leaves.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the main meaty body of the croquette filling.
Chicken
Adds savory flavor and bulk to the filling.
Boiled bread and milk
Adds moisture and softness, helping the filling hold together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist interior.
Egg yolk
Binds the coating so the cracker dust adheres to each roll.
Cracker dust
Forms a crumb coating that browns and crisps when fried.

The step that matters

Fry until brown. The cracker dust coating browns and crisps in hot fat, and the filling is already cooked, so the frying mainly sets the crust. Frying too long or too hot can scorch the outside before the filling is heated through.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, bread, milk, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, bread, milk, butter, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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